I hear birds twittering in the mornings doing their best to impress. We’re getting almost 17 hours of daylight, I’m glad I’ve no lawn to cut. In gardens down south fussy little songbirds will be flitting about deciding where to nest and rear their young. Here falcons, hawks and sea gulls flit about. I’m not much on identifying migratory birds but do recognize obvious ones like golden eagles. They’re the size of small planes.  A bald eagle flew over my place this afternoon. I don’t have a bird table.

We have a thaw on our hands and I saw a pair of flies humping outside so spring has reached us. I’ve been back two weeks from the 400-mile Liverpool Bay journey. Return timing was perfect. Weather now is too warm for my dogs to run. I ran myself on the river ice for an hour wearing my Ron Hill Tracksters. A southerly breeze bought smells that should be bottled as perfume.

I walked into Inuvik for groceries. Receding snowlines exposed a few Christmas decorations. Rousing ravenous smelly hibernating black bears and grizzlies will soon be above ground on the kill. Sow polar bears will be appearing teaching their young the art of killing. Lone male polar bears don’t hibernate. They kill things year round. 

Nutrience ran an April competition on their website. The idea was to re-name one of my dogs. 1,023 names were entered. These included Chopper, Elvis and Candykiss. I chose Beef.

I ran first thing for two hours, enjoyed it too. It was a cool blue cloudless day. A friend heard on the radio and emailed me about someone dying on Everest, ‘tis the season. The expedition had medically induced motives. Sherpas were apparently lugging up stationary exercise bikes for experiments to be undertaken on cyclists at altitude.